


On the Shoreless Sea

by Flowerflamestars



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: An AU of an AU, F/F, F/M, Found Families, Librarian Nesta, M/M, Merchant Archerons, Nesta Archeron beneath the sun beloved, Not Canon Compliant, Revolutionary High Lord Tarquin, The ten thousand libraries, alt! Daylight, chosen true love, love is a verb, sometimes a tie is destiny and sometimes its a chain to break
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 13:15:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30005454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars
Summary: She had drowned to become, and the waters of the world knew her name.
Relationships: Amren/Varian (ACoTaR), Azriel/Lucien Vanserra, Cresseida/Elain Archeron, Nesta Archeron/Tarquin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	On the Shoreless Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Daylight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23759698) by [Flowerflamestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars). 



> This is an au of an au- Daylight in all it's Nesta in Day, Lucien and Azriel, Helion glory- but a world where none of those Nessian moments happen. Cassian doesn't have a crisis of faith. He's on the wrong side of the civil war, the wrong side of where he wanted to be, and ultimately, the wrong side of destiny entirely. 
> 
> A fluffy Nesquin AU- it will work stand alone with the knowledge that Nesta ran away to the Day Court post acowar and became a Librarian of the Ten Thousand, but I do recomment reading Daylight if you want greater context to her healing journey. Thank you for reading!

_“May your love for me be_  
_like_  
_the scent of the evening sea_  
  
_drifting in_  
_through a quiet window_  
  
_so i do not have to run_  
_or chase or fall_  
_... to feel you_  
  
_all i have to do_  
_is_  
_breathe.”_

― Sanober Khan

***

The sun rises, the sun sets, and the waves never once cease.  
  
As a child full of longing to escape the rules of her highborn life, as a young woman yearning for what could have been in another world, the merchant fleet of her family, Nesta Archeron had long dreamt of the sea.  
  
Those waters who could not be tamed by man, that would take her, were she brave enough, to the very ends of the world.  
_  
Women are unlucky_ , human men whispered, dangerous to allow out on the water. _The sea is a lady and she loves them too well.  
_  
To allow a woman onboard was to tempt fate, to bring doom, to invite in the drowning depths that would bring a whole ship down.  
  
It had only made her want it more- and Nesta even young, had been no fool. Women weren’t allowed to be sailors, but women were allowed to own ships. _Nesta_ had owned ships, the dowery set aside by her grandfather, a great act of love until she’d grown old enough to understand they were always meant to belong to some other man.  
  
Her blood, her family legacy, simple exchange of gold: Nesta Archeron didn’t need luck, she would have gotten out.  
  
Nesta Archeron had gotten out- from under her families name, from the murderous gaze of her sister’s monstrous husband, away from the Night Court and the whole cursed, freezing North.

She was the Librarian, and she was _free._  
  
But no amount of freedom meant she could sleep through the night, with the sound of the ocean nearby in her ears.  
  
She had drowned to become, and the waters of the world knew her name.  
  
The damned ocean here was more alive than any human port she’d ever seen. Summer’s sea, so bright with life and brimming with light the city of Adriata barely needed magic to see after sundown- it was in the water, _everywhere_ , gleaming with luminescence.  
  
Teal, gold, impossible pink. Light in the ceaselessly moving water that put children to bed assured against that dark, lit the strolls of lovers, that simple slow slide toward rest in homes all the way down the coast.  
  
It was beautiful, and it was driving her absolutely insane.  
  
These people didn’t deserve her ire- were certainly waiting for her to behave badly anyway, walking around with her just familiar enough face. Not for the first time, as she stomped down the cold beach, Nesta wondered _how the hell_ Rhysand had talked her sister into that particular folly.  
  
Fingerprints left by his manipulation shaped her baby sister’s entire life- but when Feyre said Summer it sounded like _paradise._

Nesta could see it- Nesta wished the scared, dreaming human girl she’d been was here instead of who she’d become: a bottomless chasm of magic, so strong, so good at what she did, but reduced to a hair-trigger of dangerous power just by the sound of crashing waves.  
  
But a human wouldn’t have been able to save Summer’s sailors.  
  
The Librarian was needed here, so Nesta had come.  
  
She hadn’t imagined she’d have to _stay_ \- where the water never stopped, where there was wonder around every corner she wanted to see and appreciate but _couldn’t,_ where everything and everyone was beautiful- Nesta wanted to go home.  
  
Instead, she found herself drawn here.  
  
Hours before sunrise, wrapped in layers of quilted silk, wet sand clinging to her ankles as Nesta followed the low, forlorn call from the water.  
_  
Sister Death,_ _Nesta Nesta Nesta, Lady Drowned like me like us like we come come come to see Sister-  
_  
Not just light or magic, Summer’s sea housed a God.  
  
A creature that had died to live, had ripped into the fabric of the world to become something greater: an act of will wrought in love and sacrifice.  
  
A creature like Nesta Archeron.  
  
Saltwater, warmer than seemed possible in distinctly cool night air, broke from the incoming tide to whirl around Nesta’s feet. Slower to recede than the rest of the swell, a clinging caress that soaked another two inches of her pants.  
_  
Hello hello hello sister Death, our Lady, hello, hello, come swim-_

Nesta sighed, and stepped out into the water. “I’m not going deeper.”  
  
The voice, when it came, reverberated into her mind, the rhythm moving the waves. Warm and female, ageless but ancient. _My daughters are very excited dearheart, I apologize if they’ve bothered you.  
_  
The voices were sirens. Selkies and the glorious fanged mermaids Nesta had been lucky enough to meet the cousin’s of in the northern waters. All drowned daughters knew one another- fae women of the sea knew Nesta and her sister well.  
  
Nails biting in her palm, Nesta clenched her hands rather than allow them to shake, as the water eddied in playful arcs.  
  
Sound mattered, not sight, and so when her voice came it was strong. The Librarian of the Ten Thousand, Second of Day, Sword of the Sun, Beloved of the Wild Hunt. Nesta Archeron, who had nothing to fear from her own kind or any other in all eternity. “No bother, old one. May I ask why I’ve been called?”  
  
The choral line returned- _to say hello, hello hello hello, to swim Lady Death, to live Lady Death, we did not know where you went-  
_  
Nesta kicked into the water, sending a splash back. “I’m well. Very well,” She paused, thought of that sea cave bar where no one had looked at her, where Elain had been delighted, “I’m better now, than I was.”  
  
Ageless depth, soft with amusement, _we are glad. And we are glad you are here-_ the voice broke off, replaced by a hum that resettled the waves. Reshaped them, gentle, as Nesta watched, tiny forms floating up to surface.  
  
The creatures that bobbed up toward Nesta making wordless, pleased little noises were not animals for all that they looked like sea creatures- each and every one an impossible weight Nesta could feel, pulling at the world.  
_  
Magic,_ suns burning beneath the waves.

Contained in the bodies of these tiny, tentacled creatures, their impossible to describe, wide wet eyes glowing circles of happiness.  
  
Despite herself, Nesta crouched down to meet them. Reward was soft, indescribably gentle little taps against her outstretched hands, friendly visitation by these baby krakens too young to speak.  
  
Godspawn of sea, eternity born to these waters.  
  
“Hello, little ones,” Nesta whispered.  
  
The hum rose, and careful, Nesta hummed it back. In still water, golden light began to glow. Spreading, _multiplying,_ from stubby baby tentacles bobbing with the sound.  
_  
Long I have slumbered_ , the loudest, eldest voice began, _My seas dreaming without me. You helped my born sister, Nesta Archeron, and I would ask in exchange for a boon that you may help me now.  
_  
What had led Nesta back to the ocean in the first place, despite her bone deep fear, sweating shimmers and hallucinating a rainbow world that didn’t hurt, deep in testing the limits of this relentless body of hers- Bryxasis, hidden in plain sight in the reefs off the Velaris coastline.  
  
Grandmother Nightmare, who begat all sirens, returned to the sea.  
  
Nesta had hidden her tracks, barely coherent, and half thought it was a dream when she woke.  
  
But it hadn’t been- it hadn’t been, and Nesta Archeron, years and newfound purpose later, would not allow the old Gods her sister had woke to be left unattended. They were her kin- more like Nesta now than Feyre herself was- and like her, they weren’t going anywhere.  
  
No matter how many how many High Fae called them _monsters.  
_  
“What help is in my power is yours.”

***

She was being watched.  
  
Hauling her sopping, utterly cold clothes with her- Nesta had gone deeper, helped float with gentle pushes the young ones toward the yawning blackness that housed their mother- she didn’t hold in the sigh of pure temper.  
  
They were safe, invisible in the water now.  
  
Only light remained, as it did everywhere here. Living light, the gift of those creatures that could endure an eon, of whom there was only a precious handful left.  
  
Nesta wondered what would be more difficult- to convince most High Lords that something that hadn’t existed since time immemorial had returned, _was real_ , or that those beautiful monsters needed help.  
_  
A better world._ The echo she kept turning over and over; Tarquin, who wanted it to be different. Humans among faeries, low fae among High Fae, Summer indeed something dreamy and paradisiacal.  
  
He’d believe her. There was no question of it.  
  
And Nesta still wasn’t sure what to _do_ with that knowledge.  
  
Nor was she able to follow through with what she might have done in other circumstances had she not stomped through the now freezing predawn dark, right to the weight of those eyes, and found Tarquin himself.  
  
Leaning against a boulder, ruefully running a hand through acres of silver braids.  
  
Who _startled,_ when she came to a stop in front of him.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Was the first thing he said, bleeding sincerity.  
  
The High Lord of Summer was dressed just as haphazardly as Nesta, but her own furiously assembled layers achieved absolutely none of the nonsensical elegance of his; the slash of bare, gleaming muscled chest through purple silk, rumpled, clashing teal sleep pants hanging low, dragging in the sand.  
  
“You’re sorry?” Nesta repeated, awkward, in not at all the tone she’d meant it.  
  
The hand he’d dropped from his hair when she’d spotted him rose again, as Tarquin rubbed the back of his neck. “I am. Sorry- I didn’t mean to follow you. Or interrupt you. _Intrude_.”  
  
The gesture was embarrassment. Shame. From a High Lord of Prythian- Helion notwithstanding, _Helion who was probably somewhere laughing at this exact moment, because he knew, he always knew-_ Nesta wouldn’t have imagined such a thing were possible.  
  
“It’s your beach,” She pointed out, dryly.  
  
Not just his in the sense that this whole land was, but truly Tarquins- the private royal cove, which Nesta had climbed out her bedroom window in sheer frustration to reach.  
  
“And you’re my guest,” Tarquin insisted, half-smile a white flash in the predawn, “And the _Librarian._ And…I think anyone would side with me that it’s thoughtless, if not vile, to sneak up on a lady in the dark.”  
  
Lady Nesta Archeron. Who she’d been human, what she’d endured fae- no, Nesta was no lady any longer.  
  
And glad for it.  
  
“I can see in the dark,” Nesta pointed out. She found herself smiling back, “Likely better than you.”  
  
Tarquin shook his head, chin dipped, like that would hide the sheer size of that dimpled grin had grown to. “You have me at a disadvantage in more ways than one, the lights _do_ seem to be following you.”  
  
Nesta didn’t need to turn to look. To see the golden light of godly power painted over the waves- children, immortals born of that ceaseless water, who knew her and were relying on her for something no one else could give.  
  
“Do you know what they are?”  
  
Tarquin tilted his head. Nesta had no idea what it was about what she’d asked- not even rudely, entirely, _horrifically_ disarmed by this moment- but his voice was rough when he answered. Deep, _deep,_ like the fathomless depths that loved him so. “We tell children they are the spirits of our dead, watching over us.”  
  
Goosebumps rose over Nesta’s skin.  
  
“They do watch over you,” Nesta said, and hoped none of it- _none of it_ \- was given away by her words. “But they also need help.”  
  
The full attention of the High Lord of Summer returned to her face.

***

Helpfully, all the professional fishermen of Summer belonged to the same guild.  
  
Shockingly well-organized, _logical_ , in an economy the mixed trade with coinage, goods, and magic- a set up that kept in mind the well-being of the fishermen and the sea itself.  
  
Admirable. Like so much of this place, if she could shake off the _sounds._  
  
Nesta liked to wonder if the real reason- having lived in Day, having seen cities in nearly every territory now- that no one was really ever allowed in Night was that such a visit would reveal that nothing outside Velaris was treated with care, much less order or mindfulness.  
  
Not _ruled,_ but only ruled over.  
  
She had to, she knew, stop being surprised every time she encountered a _functioning_ system under a High Lords care.  
  
So it was easy in the end, for Nesta to meet with the highest ranking fishermen. Tarquin, once he understood could have issued an edict- but seemed charmingly uncomfortable with the prospect of telling _anyone_ how to do their own job.  
  
He was disarming and _beautiful_ \- and eventually mentioned, as he must have known, that there was no clear way Nesta could have gotten to that beach, where no one could winnow, where the only doors out the palace came from Tarquin’s own personal wing.  
  
She’d ground out the truth.  
  
Disarming, beautiful, _and_ possessed with the hugest laugh she’d ever heard as he stumbled over insisted he wasn’t laughing at her- _no, of course not just_ -it was just that Cresseida and he used to do the same thing, when they were children, when they lived in that part of the palace growing up. Half the windows still probably didn’t latch, to this day.  
  
Heat, foreign and honey slow, flooded beneath her skin.  
  
She was saved from having to answer by their arrival. Back to the palace to dress- Tarquin had tapped his own utterly distracting bare chest ruefully when he said, like Nesta’s mostly soaked pajama pashmina cloak ensemble was _fine-_ and the half paced rush of getting to the guild before the boats left with dawn.  
  
Winnowing was nothing, for either of them.  
  
But Tarquin had grinned and set off, long strides slowed for her, seemingly determined to walk across the half-awake, beautiful city.  
  
So they walked.  
  
As luminescence faded, as the sky instead gilded the waves and everything else in slow pre-daybreak blues. It was the closest to quiet, to _comfort,_ Nesta had felt since arriving.  
  
And Tarquin didn’t talk.  
  
Not the sort of silence Nesta was used to- silence that seethed with words unsaid, that made it utterly clear whoever was with her wished she’d just say _something-_ but serene. Just a man, walking through his city, as he had a thousand times over and was yet, still pleased to simply be there.  
  
He’d put on a shirt- _which Nesta absolutely was not a little grumpy at the sight of-_ but the embroidered collar hung open, moving with the breeze that seemed to find Tarquin wherever he went, a loving brush of salty air.  
  
Strong enough to stir the silvery braids falling down his back, set softly chiming gold beads just loud enough, _just enough_ , that she could focus on them over the waves.  
  
Just right.  
_  
Soft._ Strange- more peaceful than she could have imagined.  
  
Light as she would have been walking in her own Library, Nesta barely realized when they’d reached the docks. The natural harbor of Adriata, rather than the magic and stone made half of the city that extended right out into the sea itself, living within the water.

Deeper here, for all manner of ship, and if anyone looked, blacker than waves should have been.  
  
Nesta wondered if anyone else could hear the _hum,_ rising from the deep. _  
_  
It was Tarquin who hesitated before the blue and white building, rolling on the balls of his feet. Hands shoved deep in pockets, he pulled off without any detectable effort or thought exactly what her sister’s piece of shit husband was always trying- a _casual_ presence, elegant and beautiful with needing polish.  
  
On Rhysand it was ego, and absolutely nothing else.  
  
“There’s going to be a lot of shouting,” Tarquin said lowly, just for her ears, sound nearly swallowed by the rising noise of the port waking to working hours.  
  
“They’re not going to like what I have to tell them?”  
  
Half a smile pulled at his full mouth, even brighter in real light. Dazzling white. “The _opposite._ We worship the Gods of open water. But it’s going to be rowdy, Librarian.”  
  
And the Gods had slept, thought dead, shrouded in stories and myth.  
_  
The sea loves_ , human men had whispered, like that was what made a world of waves and depth dangerous. This sea did love, and was loved in return- from sunny shallows to depths monstrous to the untrained eye.  
  
By these people, and this one man, more than any other.  
  
Nesta nodded once, sharp- strangely bereft as Tarquin’s smile only bloomed in response, mimicking the gesture- and went to find the guildhead. Not ignoring exactly, her enormous, beautiful shadow, but something near.  
  
He wasn’t actually _following_ her.  
  
The High Lord of Summer had been careful from the very first day- to be beside her, but not too close. There was no leaning over her shoulder, no craning up to meet his gaze if Tarquin could help it. He never approaching her from behind, never loomed.  
  
Respect, and Nesta was used to it now, but she hadn’t expected it to feel so _notable.  
_  
His gentle hand on her shoulder, burning warm through the panic. Led but not pushed out a crowd as she froze- Nesta had known Tarquin for a week, but three days in the High Lord had proved himself _more than notable_ , not that she let herself think it.  
  
A High Lord, sitting on the ground, before her.  
  
Not made low in the least- simply kind enough it hurt to see. To experience, not that it had kept Nesta from talking to him. From a stilted offer of breakfast to talking her down from a panic attack, to a day under sun, his deep voice a safer, more steady thing than the waves.  
  
Everything about Tarquin was _notable._  
  
It set her teeth on edge nearly as much as standing in this densely packed meeting hall- Nesta had _forgotten_ her hood, the gold bound cloak that erased everything about her but the Library. The symbol of her authority that hid her, that kept her _safe._  
  
But Nesta didn’t need it, as greetings began on all sides.  
  
A single second of hesitation spared- Tarquin was gone. Had settled, all broad shoulders and soft smile, leaning against the back wall. Ceded completely any authority in this moment, to her and her alone.  
  
Nesta was _not_ going to smile back, but it was a difficult impulse to fight.  
  
She did what she always did. Threw back her shoulders, found a visible place to stand - on top of a crate this time, salt-stained wood bringing her above the boisterous crowd- and spoke, the knowledge everlasting before and behind her words.  
  
The Librarian of the Ten Thousand had wisdom to share, and to fae of all shapes and sorts, that was sacred.  
  
Easier still, to deliver on her promise.  
  
This was just one guild, in one city, but an extent system for important messages ran down the coast. Summer’s citizen didn’t just listen- they were willing to act, immediately, with growing noise that said _wonder.  
_  
Their Gods had returned to them, with the smallest of requests.  
  
To cease the capture of just one of the many species of crab in these waters, the favorite food of krakens in their first year of life.  
  
They lived, returned from the darkest depths, a future entrusted to the Court their mother had once protected against all invasion, and would once more when her children were grown.  
  
Nesta didn’t need to offer placation, exchange for lost profits. The words would have been lost- it _was_ loud, a cheering stacatto of language echoing deafening to the high ceiling. Raucous joy that she could breathe in; what others thought to be monsters safe with these loving people, Nesta’s fallen-into destiny authority enough for anything else.

When she looked again, a broad palm was offered up before her.  
  
Sometime between when she’d begun speaking and the cheers, Tarquin had rolled up his sleeves, whipcord strength apparent in every inch of forearm. Waiting, gold rings bright in the morning light, to hand her down.  
  
Nesta grabbed his hand and jumped.  
  
“Do you think,” She said, made audible only by closeness, “They would like to see?”

Reply, beneath the sheer noise was the burst of a grin, Tarquin shaking his head in disbelief.  
  
Nesta- who was starting to feel a little possessed by that smile, driven to madness- who suddenly couldn’t bare to be inside for a second longer- didn’t think it through in the least. Squeezed, instead, the hand she had yet to let go of, and winnowed them both out to the water’s edge.  
  
It was only on the docks, inches from the dive into already churning depths, that Nesta realized what she’d done.  
  
Tarquin had already dropped her hand- a choral line in her head that said, scathing, _of course he had_ \- to rub his eyes. Laughed a little again, giddiness in the deep sound, “Was that the Library?”  
  
It had been so long since she’d spent time with anyone outside Day, outside her own dominion that Nesta had forgotten, for just a second, why exactly she always winnowed alone. “No.”  
  
She knew what he’d seen, what he’d felt. When other faeries winnowed the world went to shadow, that nowhere place of travel between. But Nesta was not born of the world any longer- she’d drowned in what built it, primordial waters of _making._  
  
When Nesta stepped between space, creation itself yawned, ready for her command. 

Water, if water were burning fire, silvery as the soul of stars.  
  
She wasn’t looking- on purpose, held steady by the hum, eyes on the water- but Nesta heard Tarquin step closer, noise it’s own kind of care from High Fae that could move faster than sight, in complete silence.  
  
“That _was”_ -  
  
“Would they like to see her, do you think?” Nesta interrupted.  
  
Tarquin stilled, one hand raised. To touch her arm, perhaps. Toward his own face, more likely, rubbed at his dazzled eyes. Nesta’s magic was not just vivid, but _wounding_ bright, to mortals.  
  
Even faeries, who might live forever without harm.  
  
But his voice when it came was laced with a laugh, full of wonder. _Young_ \- faery ages still made no sense to Nesta. She’d been remade well into human adult years, so faeries simply shifted her into a category; but she felt often just as much Helion’s contemporary as Lucien’s, the mans own son and _eight hundred_ years younger.  
  
Tarquin’s youth was more real to Nesta- he’d barely lived eight decades. Longer than Nesta could imagine and yet, still not so long it outpaced human life.  
_  
“Her?”_  
  
Despite herself, Nesta smiled. Stepped forward the very edge of the dock, balanced on the precipice, and began to hum.  
  
It echoed back to her, growing. The song of the Sea Gods, the krakens beneath the waves. Rose and became, leaving room with Nesta’s smaller voice, a space in the melody for her wordless call.  
  
The water grew darker, and began to part.  
  
Biting her cheek, sound briefly changing tune as she did, Nesta reached out, blind, for Tarquin. God to God, the sound echoed on, but should need ever arise, the High Lord needed to know what his Court’s eldest guardian sounded like.  
  
He’d moved again without her noticing, the calloused, broad palm she eventually seized upon extended, _hovering,_ a respectful distance behind her back.  
  
To catch her, if Nesta stumbled.  
  
It didn’t help in the least that Tarquin, once she’d found his hand, laced their fingers together, squeezing gently.  
  
Blood on her tongue, Nesta made herself unclench her jaw. Pull him closer, where she wanted him, and _push._ “Listen.”  
  
Arm brushing her shoulder, thumb skating over the back of her hand, Tarquin did as Nesta asked. Sentinel, barely moving, emitting such heat Nesta wanted to _lean_ \- and then his breath caught.  
  
“Is that?”  
  
“The little ones cannot speak yet. This is their song, but she’s coming.” He was so pleased she could scent it, verdant blooming with heat. Nesta swallowed, took refuge in humming a few more notes. “She was waiting."  
  
Near enough his words stirred her hair- and Nesta had put him there, hadn’t she? _What was she thinking?-_ Tarquin murmured, soft. “In stories, there is always tell that a hum could be heard on the mist. Fog rolled in with song. That’s how they all start.”  
  
She couldn’t stand it- Nesta looked up, tilted back her head, and there was Tarquin, grinning down to meet her.  
  
“Mother of Mist,” Tarquin finished, voice abruptly full volume, dropping a full octave as Nesta met his bright eyes. “Soul of the sea. Protector.”  
  
“She has a sister,” Nesta whispered back, a godly secret. “Grandmother Nightmare, who begat all sirens. Bryxasis.”  
  
The harbor _burst._  
  
There were no other words for it, water blasting into the sky, sea soaking Nesta and Tarquin when both. The Sea God’s sense of timing might have saved Nesta from intrigued, awed face Tarquin had been making, but not from this: that rather that pull her from the edge, Tarquin leapt in front of her, body a shield between Nesta and the sea.  
  
It left him a careless breathe from falling, but all that mattered was this: he wasn’t touching her.  
  
Just the hand she’d offered.  
  
Leaning back further, unsteady for it, rather than intrude too much more on her space.  
  
Careful, _he was so damned careful,_ free arm extended out in balance, laughing in a delight as wide and deep as the sea itself.  
_  
Sister daughter friend Nesta Nesta Nesta- will you swim will you dance do you smile? Lady Death we come to play to say hello to live to see- Lady Death, do we please the Lord of the Sea?  
_  
With a sigh, Nesta stepped back, heaving Tarquin with her. Whatever her face was doing- Nesta herself didn’t know, caught somewhere between the call of sirens and unreal beauty of his his resolute body, curved around hers like _shelter_ \- his smile grew wider in response.  
  
Her braid, sodden with salt water, lost the war against pins to slide sideways and unwind.  
  
Perfectly aware she looked like a drowned cat wet, Nesta straightened with a sigh and rung out her hair. Willed away the corona of pins, both still caught near her scalp and clattering to the well worn wood like rain.  
  
And looked up, only to find Tarquin watching her.  
  
Frustrated- _intrigued, attracted, tired, longing for simple, for Day, to pry Tarquin’s skull open and learn the source of the light in his eyes_ \- Nesta grabbed his arm again, and turned the High Lord to his God.  
  
“I wasn’t,” Tarquin whispered.  
  
“I’m _sorry_?”  
  
He crossed his arms. Grinned sidelong at her, apparently watching the realization that Nesta had been muttering to herself with rapt interest. “Missing my God.”  
  
Nesta said nothing.  
  
Cast her eyes instead to the mighty sight before them, a mess of tentacles and teeth, body so vast if failed to be comprehensible, even now, beneath the sun, filling the entire bay of the Adriata harbor in darkness.  
  
No violence to the fearful appearance- the eldest of the sea had simply lifting any ships in her way, great vessels held steady and safe high in the air on enormous limbs.  
_  
Hello sister Death.  
_  
Nesta didn’t have to ask to know this time, Tarquin could hear what she could. He’d hidden his face in one hand, like the moment might disappear, too much to look at.  
  
“Your terms are met gladly, old one.” Nesta didn’t bother to shout, knew water would carry her words no matter how deep they hard to travel.  
_  
Deartheart._ It was a sigh, pleased. _We were waking, but thanks to you we are awoken. Tell the Lord at your side we will hear him now, everywhere, as he hears us and his ancestors did.  
_  
“I hear you,” Tarquin said, voice rough.  
_  
We know you, child. As we know every heart that belongs to the waves, every life we will protect.  
_  
“Incredible.” _  
_  
The sea, pleased, seemed to recede, tentacles reaching for shore. Guild fisherman, children, the early to rise city called to the sea by the sheer sound and sight. It said something of Summer that Nesta couldn’t seen any fear.  
  
Wonder, curiosity, _tears.  
_  
An ache, blooming beneath Nesta’s ribs. For Summer loved their monsters, their Gods, and would guard with open hearts those dangerous beings.  
  
Gentle, the water barely shifting, the ships were returned to float. Vast reach retreated to ocean, only to reappear offering things: enormous fish, a tide of oysters, kelp tangled in treasure.  
  
“She is,” Nesta agreed.  
  
Rough-edged, the noise Tarquin made was not quite a laugh, tears in his throat dragging at the sound.  
  
“No,” He said, without a hint of hesitation. “You are.”  


  
***

Nesta made the same mistake again and again, thinking it was _done._

When she’d been met with abject hostility to her undeniable Archeron face that first day, and let herself be caught off guard when Tarquin followed to help.  
  
When she’d crashed from fear to panic to something worse at the sight of a human face, living free among faeries, and he’d had to talk her down. Bring her back, like it was nothing, with the sun on her skin, kept her safe until Nesta was breathing again.  
  
And there he’d been the next day, offering her a new hat after hers had blown away.  
  
Interested enough to keep coming, but respectful enough to make the effort for just seconds of her time if need be.  
  
Just a grin, on busy days.  
  
Just the weight of ocean eyes that sought Nesta out, steady and warm.  
  
Here he was, the day after Nesta had proved herself something dangerous, bringing her _breakfast_.  
  
After he’d heard a God call her _sister,_ call her _Death-_ here was the High Lord of Summer,handing Nesta something buttery and delightful, asking no questions and making no demands on her time as she wandered his territory enacting magic.  
  
Here Tarquin was, listening to what she said, smiling at the sight of Nesta’s hair blowing across her face.  
  
Asking, completely serious, in the lovely molten voice of his, “Can I make an appointment?”  
  
Nesta didn’t shove the pastry box back at him, but she thought about it. “An _appointment?_ ”

Tarquin, good naturedly, cringed. Smiled rueful, eyes crinkling. “You’re the Librarian. Your time is worth something. To me, to my people, who you have been ceaselessly helping since you arrived."  
  
“Yes, _yours,_ ” Nesta said, unsure why she was even arguing. “You are High Lord, the Library is, of course, at your disposal.”  
  
Shoving both hands in his pockets, Tarquin leaned back. Released the breath he’d apparently been holding. Salt of the sea and sugar, his whole presence that smelled, _maddeningly,_ somehow to her faery senses like sunshine itself.  
  
She wanted to _bask_ in it- and that was- _that was not going to happen.  
_  
“Not the Library,” Tarquin said slowly, steady in the face of her scowl. “But I wanted to talk to you about something, if you have time today.”  
  
Nesta hadn’t slept in six days and wanted to lick the line of his throat- she had time. She had three damned more weeks here, waiting for the full moon to break a shipwrecks curse, the soul-eating magic that had called her here in the first place. Twenty days trying to do some good without ever stopping long enough to really hear the sea.  
  
His voice was a thousand times more soothing to listen to, anyway.  
  
Clinging sugar vanished from her hand. Nesta squared her shoulders and looked up, “I have time now.”  
  
And there were the dimples, the ease of Tarquin’s smile, even directed at _her. “_ You do?”  
_  
“Yes?”_  
  
“Good, if it really doesn’t interfere with anything…” Tarquin trailed off, running a hand through his braids, today studded in shining silver ornaments. The overall affect was blinding, nearly so as the smile he eventually shot her, nodding in the direction of that long, sloping path to the sea. “Would you like to walk with me?”  
  
Water lingered everywhere in Adriata- channels, canals, hanging in the air to delight children, beneath the very homes to the east, neighborhoods built out as islands- but like the High Lord whose smile Nesta was beginning to mark time by, she was drawn again and again, to the shore.  
  
Ripping off a scab.  
  
Breathing in a dream lost.  
  
He waited for her to fall in step, matched her with that relaxed lope. Hands in his pockets, pleasure a grace about Tarquin’s shoulders just to walk through his city with her.  
  
Maybe the calmest faery Nesta had ever met- but that wasn’t quite right. _Centered._ Deep waters that showed beneath that serene purpose, passion and drive you’d be an idiot to miss; but also and, always this: ease.  
  
In his world, beside her. Never a second’s hesitation, never a moment where it could be imagined Tarquin was anywhere but exactly where he wanted to be.  
  
He made it _easy._  
  
“Should I be asking about your schedule?” Nesta drawled, in a voice she’d nearly forgotten she possessed. “You’re just as busy as me.”  
  
More so, if official duties were the only thing counted. Time more strained, as Tarquin did things Nesta did not- sleep through the night, she assumed. Eat regular meals. Live off more than kinetic coping, sugar, and sun-drenched magic.  
  
She loved Day, missed home.  
  
Hated the sound of the sea that still set her off, even now, when she could wade into the surf without falling apart. But no matter how hard it was, how some part of her might truly _go mad_ if she stayed, Nesta could not deny that the Summer sun warmed her all the way to her lonely soul.

Not unlike the look Tarquin cast her way.  
  
“I got an early start,” The High Lord of Summer said, low, a joke implicit in the tone for Nesta to hear: he was absolutely busy. He was here, seeking her out, anyway.  
  
“Well,” Nesta purred, “Your bribery is effective. I can live with being an excuse for a break- _this time_.”  
  
Tarquin blinked, ultramarine eyes surreal in the midday light. “A _respite_.”  
  
Reply frozen in her throat, a truth a little too jagged spilled out, “Sometimes we don’t even talk.”  
  
The smile that crinkled his face, dimpled those cheeks, was back, spreading honey slow to drown Nesta in warmth.  
  
“I’ve never met a Librarian,” Tarquin confessed, “Always wanted to. And you’re a hell of a lot more than the sum of Library, Nesta. It’s an honor to see you work.”  
  
The Librarian of the Ten Thousand- nameless, faceless, divine. Sacred, the intersection between unknowable history and immortal present, knowledge both gift and succor. The surprise of her identity meant they’d skipped the entire ritual dance of her giving him her name to use.  
  
She _abandoned_ her vestiments, and Tarquin had been right beside her.  
  
A respectful distance away, sleeves rolled up, pulling choking sailors from the surf like he wasn’t royal.  
  
He’d looked right at her- Nesta, just a person without the hood, and thanked her.  
  
He hadn’t stopped looking since, and she couldn’t stop looking _back._  
  
Nesta swallowed. “So where are you taking me?”  
  
“Nowhere. You’re always outside this time of day."  
  
“So we’re walking”-  
  
“So you can enjoy the sun.”  
  
“And the _appointment?”_  
  
Tarquin shrugged, the motion languorous, pulling at muscle. “I wanted your advice on something, but,” He licked his lips, gaze flicking down to her, “You can tell me to fuck off. _I won’t_ ”-  
  
“I don’t need permission for that,” Nesta interrupted, a smile she couldn’t contain bleeding into the words.  
  
“No,” Tarquin agreed, pleased, voice dropping to impossible depth. “You don’t.”  
  
She liked his voice. Nesta could admit it- she’d long since wondered if any sort of beauty could even touch her now, but he did. Deep, _deep_ , but warm; right past appreciable into something aching lovely.  
  
There was nothing to do but look back at him, frozen together in the middle of the street.  
  
A year, a minute later, Tarquin startled. Grin widening with the breath of a laugh as he careful touched Nesta’s elbow, directed wordless with the lightest brush of his palm, Nesta out of the way of oncoming faeries. “Would you like to sit?”  
  
Not trusting her voice, Nesta nodded.  
  
Led the way into one of the tiny, lush parks that dotted the city, not so unlike the one where they’d spent their first morning together. Full bloom surrounded them, semi-tropical plants bursting with color, leaves as big as Nesta’s entire body providing shelter to the bench she stopped at, driftwood carved comfortable.  
  
Tarquin waited for her to sit. Followed, proud shoulders low, elbows balanced on his knees.  
_  
Nerves,_ Nesta’s brain insisted, past the siren song thud of her heart.  
  
“If you don’t want to talk about it, I won’t bring it up again. Ever.” Nesta watched him swallow, half spellbound by his abject earnestness _. “_ I wouldn’t ask at all if it weren’t _important”_ -  
  
“Tarquin.”  
  
She’d meant the interruption to be a comfort, but Tarquin stopped dead.  
  
Breathed a gusty sigh and sat up, turned fully toward her, one long arm gripping the back of the bench. “You remember Marianne?”  
  
Nesta shook her head.  
  
“The woman who owns the bakery, that you met.”  
  
What Tarquin didn’t say- the _human,_ the first human face Nesta had ever seen above the Wall whose very sight sent her into a tailspin of anxiety.  
  
Who he’d assured her, confused but concerned, she was _free._ A citizen of summer, just like any High Fae.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
At the sound of her voice, Tarquin breathed.  
  
“She’d like to meet you, but that’s not the point. You were human, and we are still rebuilding.” His expression remained gentle, but fierceness found a home in Tarquin’s words. “There’s no point in just remaking the old. We’re accepting refugees. Summer is moving forward- I want to make sure the new cities are human friendly.”  
  
That was why he was asking- because he knew it was poking at a wound, but Tarquin felt like he had to try.  
  
For his people, for this city, for the future he so ardently believed in. Change, not so slow to immortals after all, but wrought in direct, sweeping action.  
  
Nesta swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. “Refugees from where?”  
  
“Spring, Autumn,” Tarquin ran a hand through his hair, silver chiming softly, “The outer edges of human territory. Hybern ransacked cities up the continent before the Queens agreed to his plans.”  
  
“And you’ll take them on, just like that?”  
  
A tired sort of smile flickered over his face, soft. “I have a million years of treasure, and a population so reduced we’re rebuilding empty cities to keep our history. There was always more of _them_ than us- but now?”  
  
He shook his head.  
  
Legs pulled up off the grassy ground beneath her skirt, Nesta curled in her perch on the sunlit bench. Twisted sideways to that face of a man trying so very hard to do something right, that most, if not all of his peers would call foolish.  
  
Reckless.  
  
A waste.  
  
“Transportation is an issue,” Nesta said, propping up her cheek with one hand. “Taxes. Perfume. Food.”  
  
Bright eyes met hers, a little exhaustion melting away. “ _Perfume?_ No, tell me about transportation first?”  
  
Tilting her head further, Nesta let her eyes fall shut, whole face in the blinding light.  
  
“Faerie cites are _sprawling._ It makes them beautiful- full of parks, public works- I wouldn’t change that. But humans can’t winnow, aren’t as strong. None of you ride horses, or use carts unless to carry _things_ , not people. A mortal child can’t be expected to walk miles to get to school and back, much less an adult twice that and still have time for everything else their day requires.”  
  
Nesta felt as much as she heard the small noise Tarquin made, a sound that said _go on_ , said _please._  
  
“Day uses a portal system. It might be applicable- means our population in the cities is a good deal more mixed.”  
  
“I could do that,” Tarquin answered, quick.  
  
Automatic, she wanted to turn her face in her hand, hide even a little her smile. But the sun was burning at the her eyelids, too glorious to move. “You need to assure some kind of accessibility to food humans can actually eat. And you need to restructure your tax system.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to tax them at all,” Tarquin murmured, “For the first two decades. They’re _refugees._ ”  
  
Nesta, gods help her, really was smiling now. She hummed in approval, “Good. But you have to factor in other humans- none of them, not even royalty, will ever have the kind of ancestral wealth a faery does.”  
  
She opened her eyes, sunspots nearly as heady as Tarquin curved toward her, listening intently. “I know my history.”  
  
“ _Good_ ,” Nesta snapped, “Than you understand that mortals were slaves in _living faery memory_ , and that loss colors us all.”  
  
“Not here,” Tarquin said, the abbreviated motion of his hand reaching for her arm barely played off. Assurance, small physical comfort he wasn’t sure would be welcome. “Summer, not even under my ancestors, believed life could be owned.”  
  
Nesta straightened. Flung like it was careless, her arm propped alongside his, white-knuckled grip on the wood nothing to the simple press of skin on skin. “You do them proud.”  
  
Tarquin laughed. “I do _not-_ Varian likes to say I’ve never met a protocol I won’t break.”  
  
“Tradition,” Nesta sneered, just a little, “Is overrated.”  
  
“It can be,” She couldn’t read his pause, the stilled joy on his face, _careful._ “You’re very good at finding that line.”  
  
In Tarquin’s voice it was more of a compliment than it should have been, _good_ a stand-in that Nesta couldn’t- wouldn’t- name.  
  
“I do have the benefit of arcane knowledge in my _bones_.”  
  
His mouth twisted like he couldn’t help it. “That too. But Nesta- you gave us back the protection of the sea. The grace of our God. I can never repay what you did for my people- we’re _safe.”  
_From invasion, from attack by sea, from the sort of force that had leveled this very city and much of Summer not once, but twice, in the last fifty years.  
  
Wondering, soulful eyes took an abrupt, entirely new tint in Nesta’s mind.  
  
Nesta leaned back, returned her feet to the ground. “I was doing my _job._ ”  
  
“No,” Tarquin answered her, molten, _adoring_. “You were being yourself.”  
  
Nesta pulled back her arm, tried to find the light again. “I’m the only Librarian there will ever be, they’re one in the same.”  
  
He was fast but she was faster, lovely callous stippled palm left hanging in midair- Tarquin, who’d wanted to reach, but wouldn’t force it.  
  
Tarquin, who was _grateful_ to her.  
  
In an utterly contained, suddenly ferocious voice that lit along Nesta’s skin, Tarquin said softly. “You are whoever you want to be, in this Court. If I’ve made you _uncomfortable_ \- I don’t want- Cresseida can take over anything between Summer and Day if you wish. You never have to see me again.” His eyes flicked up, took in Nesta’s frozen, unrelenting interest, and swallowed. _Audibly_. “I don’t see the Library when I look at you.”  
  
Nesta wanted to close her eyes again.  
  
It wouldn’t help the flayed open feeling- Nesta Archeron seen, and she’d let him right in, hadn’t she? Into her magic, that could kill and wound with just the sight. Her day, her time, those sparse minutes she looked forward to with each sunrise.  
  
Easier- agonizing and easier than anything she’d ever done before.  
  
Faery fast rather than lose her nerve, Nesta caught his dangling hand in hers. “I might see a High Lord when I look at you, but you wear it better than almost anyone else.”  
  
A flicker, a smile, Tarquin squeezing her hand with heartbreaking gentleness. “Helion have me beat?”  
  
Nesta snickered, despite herself. “He is…my dearest friend. You might say I’m his Cresseida?”  
  
“You yell at him about his hair?”  
  
She barely had time to blink at that, too busy watching Tarquin’s slow, carefully broadcast movements as he reached for her other hand too. “Cresseida doesn’t like your _hair_?”  
  
Tarquin cocked his head. “Leaders are supposed to wear it short. Authoritative.”  
  
“An overrated tradition,” Nesta said, without thinking.  
  
The bright, pleased burst of Tarquin’s laughed scared birds from the trees overheard, rainbow edged wings flashing through the greenery, heading back toward the sea.  
  
It made her brave. “You didn’t want my advice because of the Library. And there are _actual_ humans to ask.”

Tarquin shook his head, looked down at both her hands cupped together in his, warm grip featherlight.  
  
“You’re brilliant,” He breathed. “A war hero. A _survivor-_ but you are also, truly, _terrifyingly_ clever. I wanted to know what you thought, _but_ ,” How a person who smiled so often, so easy, could make so many different expressions with the simple perk of his mouth seemed impossible, but this smile was _quiet.  
_  
A brazen sort of softness, here in the shelter of leaves, in happiness Nesta’s fear couldn’t shatter. “I wanted to talk to you.”  
  
That easy- that simple- that heartwrenching.  
  
“You’re not so bad to talk to yourself,” Nesta said slowly, meeting his gaze.  
  
Frozen in fae stillness, Tarquin watched as she curled her legs back beneath her, made closer by the motion.  
  
“Clever too,” Nesta murmured, the weight of his eyes like a high, like a gift, “I _have_ seen what you did to the economy.”  
  
A salt mist laugh, breathed across her face.  
  
“I’m just a sailor,” Tarquin said, lifting her right hand- writing hand, knife hand, death so easily kindled between delicate bones- to his mouth, a single zephyred kiss left lingering on the inside of Nesta’s wrist.  
  
She’d cut off the King of Hyberns head with the hand.  
  
“Sailor _prince,_ ” Nesta insisted. “What did they call you? Silver storm, the deadly tide?”  
  
He dropped her hand to laugh, hand running abashed through his hair. _“_ That was _Varian.”  
_  
One thing to watch him laugh- another entirely to see the delight that anchored him in place, watching _her._  
  
“Did you like it?” Nesta asked, when she’d finally bswallowed her mirth at the look on his face saying his cousins name. “Being part of the armada?”  
  
“Yes,” Tarquin breathed, unwinding enough to loop his free arm over the back of the bench once more, fingertips grazing her sun-warmed shoulder. “I loved it. Still do.”  
  
“Would you have eventually done something like Varian? Headed up a fleet?”  
  
“ _No,_ ” The amusement was kind, more wry than indication she’d said something wrong. “Varian was raised for his position, to lead the military. I was a merchant marine. Learned to fight too, but no.” He met her gaze, open and easy, “I wanted to explore.”  
  
“And that feels like a loss?”  
  
Tarquin chuckled. “Go right for _my throat_ Archeron, it’s all yours.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Nesta smiled, “Were you under the impression I was _nice?_ ”  
  
“ _Kind_ ,” Tarquin corrected, clear water eyes like a reckoning. “I don’t mind. I miss it, sometimes, the sea. But Summer matters more. The chance, a real chance, not to find a better world, but make one."  
  
“Duty is a tradition worth keeping.”  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” Honest as a bleeding heart, shameless and true. “Being who we are- it’s a gift, but _also”-_  
  
“A debt,” She interrupted, brows high. “An opportunity.”  
  
“Possibility,” Tarquin answered, “Which is just as much what I loved on open water.”  
  
She could have let it fade.  
  
Joked, still pleased to a degree she didn’t want to examine closely that she could make him laugh, Nesta whose chosen company could be counted on a single hand.  
  
Could have led him back out into the city, continued a walk that would take her all the way to the water, windblown as the afternoon shone on, basking as much in climate as the look on his face when her braid inevitably fell apart.  
  
She’d winnowed once, to find the sun.  
  
Saved herself and made a home beneath it’s rise and set, Day her burning heart.  
  
A place Nesta could return to that could never be lost. But here, Summer, a hundred longings overlain- to look and be seen, her hand grasped precious, for daylight, for the sea, for that vast, impossible freedom that stirred her heart just as much as the sea breeze whipped through her hair.  
  
Nesta was safe, but that hardly meant she was done taking chances.  
  
So Nesta Archeron sat languid in the sunshine, and told the High Lord of Summer a story not even the Library knew.  
  
Of a girl born of two merchant bloodlines. Not a hoped for son- but still so very valued, a fleet her christening gift, an armada awaiting her marriage. The story of girl who’d known all along she could do better, she could have more, if she were only willing to reach.  
  
The story of girl who wanted more than anything else to see the world, to whom the sea was the answer all along. 

***

The mistake Nesta made was long coming.  
  
Walking in the sun had effortlessly become dinner- in the palace, with Cresseida rolling her eyes over her wine glass but nonetheless shoving enough food for an army Nesta’s direction, spices burning her senses clean.  
  
In tiny restaurants in sea caves, perched above the liquid sunset like a sigh.  
  
In dark, seethingly formal establishments where Tarquin made her laugh so hard they had to leave, choked down joy impossible to hide under his wicked smile.  
  
Beneath the midnight moon, cake when he found her still working, bitter perfect chocolate he fed her bite by bite.  
  
Dinner that became breakfast all over again, in the predawn, coffee in one hand and a pearl dripping silk net in the other, Tarquin’s steady grip catching up the tangle of Nesta’s hair, safe from the wind.  
  
Time that rushed like water from her cupped hands, nights to mornings to golden afternoons, sleepless surreal and the best, perhaps, that Nesta had ever felt.  
  
He was looking- Tarquin right there, in something so much more gentle than pursuit, more simple than shameless- and Nesta was looking back.  
  
Finding him that seventh day, ink stained and surrounded by advisors, ripping apart a twelve thousand year old tax code.  
  
Listening to his exhaustion-worn voice after a night of drinking, confessing how he’d studied the constitutions of human freeholds, that he didn’t know how to stop being High Lord- but he would if he could.  
  
Magic wound too tight between Prythian and his own power-rich blood, but Tarquin wanted his people to _choose,_ would dismantle his entire legacy if it wouldn’t have also ripped apart Summer itself.  
  
The twelfth day, a summer storm rumbling the heavens apart, rain drops a flood. Tarquin’s laugh, head tilted back, content to get soaked when Nesta didn’t move.  
  
Every day, nineteen nights, walking her back to her rooms where Nesta didn’t rest, the moment at the door that stretched longer and longer- not pressure but _pleasure_ , a reluctance to leave each other’s company even for hours.  
  
Another afternoon- Tarquin’s tax drafting that had taken over several tables, Nesta finally out of requests from Summer court citizens, moved on to raiding the royal library full of tomes so old no one could read them.  
  
In the warmth, in the quiet, Tarquin’s arm a warm weight around her shoulders, Nesta fell asleep.  
  
And _dreamt._  
  
Sea sounds in her ears the Cauldron’s deathly drowning waters.  
  
Nesta dying, Nesta ripping apart the world.  
  
Nesta alone, as she always was in the end- _eternal, damned, too much, not enough, burning too bright or not at all, a fire that couldn’t be contained that was too dangerous to touch, to know-  
_  
She woke up on the ground, surrounded in silt-fine ash, to Tarquin calling her name.  
  
“Nesta, are you”-  
  
She scrambling out of his reach, panic insurmountable, her hands wreathed in deadly fire. She was _burning through the stone floor- she’d-_ the table was gone. The paper. Her jewelry- burnt to nothing, dissolved in unmaking.  
  
“ _Don’t touch me,_ ” Nesta snapped.  
  
She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t _think-_ slowly, Tarquin sat back. Hands raised in universal surrender, eyes never leaving her flushed face.  
  
“You were dreaming,” He bit out, pained, “Of the Cauldron.”  
  
Nesta froze. “I was _talking?”_  
  
A wince, but so much worse, the watchful stillness that said _look at me,_ steadiness that ridiculously still said _you’re safe, I’ll keep you safe, I’m here.  
_  
Not talking- when had Nesta ever talked her sleep?  
  
Screaming, like every night spent drowning, like the dreams that dogged her steps even now.  
  
Flames melted away all at once, leaving Nesta’s unharmed, shaking hands.  
  
“You didn’t try to put out the fire,” Nesta numbly heard her own voice say, dim in the sun drenched room.  
  
Tarquin rocked in place, the motion like he’d physically been struck. “ _You_ were on fire. I’m not- you can’t breath water like I can, sweetheart.”  
  
“I can’t drown either. Not really.”  
  
“That doesn’t,” Tarquin shook his head, finally looking away, that feverish, nearly wet gleam to his eyes a whole separate pain. His voice came out rough. “I’m not going to hurt you. _Ever._ ”  
_  
She couldn’t breathe._  
  
Nesta shot to her feet. “I need- _I’m sorry._ ”  
  
Not a run, but a close enough thing, skirts tangled around her legs as Nesta stormed her way out one of the great arches. Out into the sun, out into air- not enough but _more._ Not the light of Tarquins eyes, but she didn’t know how to have that anyway.  
  
Her rings melted- a stone table obliterated- but she hadn’t burned herself.  
  
And she hadn’t harmed Tarquin.  
  
That was enough- that had to be enough.  
  
More collapse than lean, Nesta sank grateful against her own arms, face hidden and balcony wall doing most of the work to keep her upright. Down the sun beat, hot as life, sinking slow and calming into her bones, across her skin, soaking into the darkness of her unbound hair.  
  
Not in the Cauldron, not in the North, not alone.  
_  
Free._  
  
Nesta was as free as the churning sea that echoed in her ears, water that haunted and called to her almost as strongly as the man who ruled it.  
  
It felt like a long time before he followed her, but Nesta knew it really wasn’t.  
  
Noise, a carefully heralded approach. Nesta straightened, her spine all she had in this moment- but Tarquin didn’t say anything. Settled beside her at the wall, followed her gaze down to the sea, present and asking nothing.  
  
Another fragile perpetuity before he spoke, every minute Nesta closer to who she’d like to be, alive beneath the light.  
  
“Pearls,” Tarquin rasped eventually, eyes unmoving from the crashing waves below, “Were our currency for generations. The market on this continent was too flooded, eventually. Other Courts stopped taking them, in the centuries before we had unified coinage.”  
  
Nesta, hesitancy a foreign, _aching_ thing, made a small noise of acknowledgement.  
  
She knew that- she knew all of that- and he was clearly aware of that too, but Nesta wanted to know what Tarquin would say.  
  
“We use the same process as humans, you know?” Tarquin leant into his elbows, dangling graceful hands flashing gold to the slow sinking sun. “Magic doesn’t help. All pearls in the world are grown the exact same way- in Summer, they remain, no matter what the rest of the Prythian thinks, our most precious possessions.”  
  
“Pearls?” Nesta repeated, and she hated, _hated_ , the halting sound of it, rough with tears.  
  
“ _Yes,_ ” Tarquin breathed, in that voice so utterly deep and lovely, too fast, too real. “We-“ He swallowed audibly, shifted the slightest bit until his arm was a warm line along her own. Gentle, more an invitation that she could move closer than any sort of weight.  
  
“In Summer,” The High Lord began again, voice once more steady as the ceaseless tide, “We understand, that the most important, most beautiful things, can be born from pain.”  
  
Nesta leaned back.  
  
All at once, the steely set of her spine melting. Simple- small- easy, her hand tucked through his elbow, her whole weight supported by one muscled arm like it was nothing.  
  
She looked to the water. Clenched her jaw for a single, anxious second before she let it go, the spasm of discomfort no help at all.  
  
“Because,” Nesta inhaled, salt and the impossibly warm scent of Tarquin’s skin filling her senses, “Because they’re beautiful?”  
  
His breath caught.  
  
“Because we understand how many die. How many times…the process fails.” He was looking at her, but Nesta couldn’t find it in herself to move. “Humans value _uniformity-_ the sameness, to string a necklace or make a pair of earrings. But we- but _I_ \- the most precious pearls are one in every hundred, every thousand, distinctive, not flawed. Like nothing else.”  
  
“They look a little like all the rest.”  
  
“ _No,_ ” The muscle beneath her hand moved, “No. They might look it- but they are not. And nothing in the world could be more valuable. To me, Nesta.”  
  
Nesta looked back.  
  
Nesta swallowed the horrible panicked breath leaping up from her lungs and moved, the motion just slow enough that Tarquin moved with her. _Caught_ her, shocking, as Nesta turned into his body, let herself be dwarfed by that broad chest.  
  
Her hand- too tight, she couldn’t seem to let go- on his arm had to be uncomfortable, _bruising_ , but all Tarquin did was sigh.  
  
“I’m not a pearl,” Nesta blurted.  
  
Too bitter, too angry, even to her own ears.  
  
A rope roughened palm landed over hers, fingertips dipped questioning into the spaces between her white knuckles. “No.”  
  
No- Nesta Archeron, who’d taken the head of king. Who’d been banished by her own sister. Whose fractured soul still told her what wind sang, longing cold air she never, ever, wanted to breathe again.  
  
Nesta, who’d grown herself strong as the right hand of the turning year, highest arcana of the Library, hidden and free beneath that beloved gold-bound hood.  
  
She hadn’t put it back on, since the very first day in Summer.  
  
“You are,” Tarquin murmured, “Fascinating. _Magical._ Brilliant and ruthless and-“ He cut himself off to breathe a laugh, “Of course you’re beautiful. Nesta, _you are glorious,_ but it is the very least of you.”  
_  
She didn’t know what to do._  
  
Unwinding her wounding grip bit by bit, only for Tarquin to tangle their hands together. Nesta could have escaped it- could have shaken him off without using even an ounce of the strength that ran so tantamount in her body.  
_  
Magical._  
  
Nesta tilted back her head. Met his absurdly beautiful eyes- more ocean than the sea itself, sunlight over water in warm, long-lost dream- and purred, “I could kill you. Nothing in this world could stop me. Not you, not an army. That’s what I am.”  
  
Tarquin, to her horror, smiled.  
  
Not the enormous grin, but something utterly soft, lining his whole face. “What kind of Lord of the Sea would I be if I only cared for shallow water? I’ve swum where light has never lived, and no depth in you is that dark.”  
  
“You don’t know that.”  
  
“Can I find out? Can I… _try_?” He broke entirely, whispering faster, “Beneath the light, beneath the water, it’s all monoliths that don’t remember words. I don’t know what you think I might learn that would scare me, but it won’t- you’re so _interesting._ I want to listen. You’re not fathomless, if you don’t want to be.”  
  
Nesta breathed.  
  
In and out, her heart roaring louder than the waves for once, filling her ears.  
  
“I don’t know,” She managed, not quite as smooth as she’d like, “Are you going to _exclusively_ speak to me in water metaphors?”  
  
Tarquin froze.  
  
Full-body, as only High Fae seemed to, more stone strength than man. A part of her wanted to respond with sameness- warning, ferocity, nothing more dangerous than what they were the second before they _exploded_ -  
  
And then he laughed.  
  
Head thrown back, pulling Nesta into the sound as he raised their tangled hands to his smiling mouth. Tarquin hid as much of his face as could be covered with her smaller palm, still laughing as he said, “I am so, _so_ bad at this.”  
  
“Not bad,” Nesta hedged, biting into her own smile, _“But”-  
_  
“No practice,” Tarquin confessed, “And you”-  
  
“No _practice?_ ” Nesta interrupted, scathing tone softened by a laugh. “You.”  
  
“ _Me_ ,” He said, easy. Gave up on hiding to fold their hands together, kiss her fingertips. “I was barely more than a child when Amarantha invaded, in the first decade of my apprenticeship. No time then, no time after.”  
  
“I thought Kallias was the youngest High Lord.”  
  
He was still _kissing_ her- almost absently, focus entirely on Nesta’s upturned face. “Mhm, Kal is. Lived as heir his whole life though- he has a mate, a court who always knew he’d rule them.”  
  
She was _absolutely_ not watching his mouth. Not fighting to shudder at the softness- so good, so strange, so utterly nothing she knew how to respond to.  
  
“You’ve been… too busy. For this.”  
  
He smiled all over again, teeth set against her skin. “Busy. Uninterested. I wanted something real.”  
  
Something _real_ \- a High Lord who walked beside her in public, who touched her like she were more fragile than glass. Not, _not,_ because he thought she was broken- no hesitation that waited for her to snap- but with the simple tact that this was what Tarquin thought Nesta deserved.  
  
Something precious.  
  
“What I am…is also much messier than a pearl harvest.”  
  
“I doubt that,” Tarquin whispered, before squaring his shoulders. “One more. You are an _entire_ ocean, Nesta Archeron. I like talking to you. I would like to keep getting to know you.”  
  
“For something real?”  
  
“Only if you want it to. We can go back to being Librarian and High Lord any time.”  
  
The people who truly enjoyed speaking to Nesta could be counted on a single hand: Elain, always. Helion, arm in arm, in step and forever in sync. Infuriating, bright Lucien and his adoring, perpetual shadow of husband- Azriel, whose silences Nesta retreated to as much as she did corners away from crowds.  
  
Nearly wrong to want more, the family Nesta had safe with her.  
  
But she’d always been reaching, hadn’t she? To see depths of the Library on one else had ever touched, to answer every message for help, to soak so much sun into her skin she forgot the northern mountains even existed.  
  
“Well,” Nesta breathed, tilting her head, “The krakens will need regular visits as they grow.”  
  
Tarquin nodded. “Absolutely.”  
  
“And writing letters seems to be half the Librarian’s job.”  
  
“What if…” Tarquin met her gaze, earnestness she wanted to cup her in hands _and drink down,_ “I want to write to _you_. Not the Librarian.”  
  
She could hear his _heart.  
_  
“What about when I send messages that only say _Tarquin,_ ” Nesta purred, utterly unprepared for the noise he made, a little like he’d been punched, “Will Cresseida try to drown me for disrespecting Summer Court authority?”  
  
He bit her hand, a light, utterly pleased brush of sharp faery teeth. “I expect she’ll be too busy laughing at how quickly I drop everything to read it.”  
_  
She wanted to bite him back._  
  
On that tempting, eternally open neckline, the swell of Tarquin’s muscled chest. The column of his throat, umber dark shining under the sun. His full, lovely mouth that he couldn’t seem to make leave her skin.  
  
Like he didn’t want to let go.  
  
“Is blatant favoritism _allowed_ of High Lords?”  
  
“I don’t give a shit what other High Lords do,” Tarquin said, with bare honesty.  
  
Nesta had to shut her eyes. Too much- too much, that she didn’t know how to have, that she hadn’t expected to want. _Something real,_ like that was easy.  
  
Like it could be simple.  
  
To reach out, and be met.  
  
Tarquin didn’t let go. Proceeded to busy himself kissing each of her knuckles and then each fingertip, teeth testing delicate skin. A High Fae High Lord- without an ounce of shame, utterly physical as their kind were.  
  
It was instinct to bite.  
  
Attraction, _dizzying._ Nesta had never needed it explained to her that High Fae teeth were not for violence, that the sting she’d craved was the opposite of casual.  
  
Below them, the tide was rushing in, louder with every minute. It was easier to listen to him- his heart, jumping as Nesta looked at him, that hitch of breath between kisses- but she could still hear it.  
  
Like he could sense her hesitance- maybe he could, it wasn’t as though Nesta had tried to hide anything for the last week, too sleep-deprived and _happy_ , Tarquin said, “We have time. It doesn’t have to be…everything.”  
  
Everything, all-consumed.  
  
What Nesta couldn’t say: _she wanted everything,_ to be loved with force of the sea, unmaking and warping, what bent and shaped the world.  
  
That she didn’t know if such a thing could exist twice, when she’d already broken it once.  
  
That _everything_ was how Nesta Archeron always felt, like she’d been given two whole raging hearts instead of just the one now hammering in her chest- and it was terrifying, how easy it might be to love this kind, beautiful, brave man.  
  
Nesta was tired of being afraid.  
  
So she opened her eyes.  
  
“I don’t know about that,” He caught her gaze. Easy, steady- _waiting_ , “Even a few drops…doesn’t all water return to become the sea eventually?”  
  
His laugh shook both their bodies, and Nesta leaned into it. The sunlight of the sound, the abiding heat of his skin.  
  
“My parents courted for three hundred years,” Tarquin whispered eventually, with the questioning, careful brush of one hand high up her spine. “You really don’t have to worry about that. You want me too? I’m not going anywhere.”  
  
The urge to freeze again was nearly overwhelming. Instead, Nesta wound her free arm around his waist- tighter than Tarquins light touch, the warm strength of his body grounding beyond all else.  
  
Tarquin stopped kissing her hand to press it, treasured, against his cheek.  
  
“The moon is in two days. Would you- spend them with me?”  
  
Two more days of surreal balance. Sleepless tidal nights, long sunny days. Her absolutely withering laugh won out, even as Nesta buried the sound against Tarquin’s chest. “I spend every day with you.”  
  
He hummed, the smile she couldn’t see pressed broad across her palm. “But now I know you _want_ to.”  
  
“I would have told you to fuck off, _if I didn’t want to._ ”  
  
Tarquin dropped her hand to hug her back, laugh stirring Nesta’s hair, as they rocked back and forth. “I know. I was waiting for it.” Featherlight, unspeakably hesitant, his lips brushed her forehead. “I’m glad you didn’t.”  
  
Nesta, who swore in her my most secret heart she’d feel that delicate, fragile hesitancy for days to come, was glad as well.

***

It wasn’t until the second day after, her left hand once more caught up between smooth skin and intriguing callouses, that she asked.  
  
Nesta understood the _biting._ Pure, driving instinct. She felt it too. She wanted it- her teeth set to the beautiful, muscled length of Tarquin’s throat, his pulse beneath her hands, to carry them both all the way down into the burning sand.  
  
Two more days of laughing, of talking, of Tarquin’s idle, casual, _constant_ touch.  
  
Nesta asked like it was just another joke between then, her sharp-edged self, and regretted it the instant sorrow unspooled in those glorious teal eyes of his.  
  
Sorrow and _embarrassment.  
_  
He didn’t blush- not like her- but Nesta could feel the heat flooding his skin.  
  
“I- _scent._ ” Tarquin said, finally, more than little startled. “I know humans don’t- surely the people who care about you…touch you?”  
  
She didn’t need his body or the sun soaked sand, Nesta was going to combust on the spot.  
  
“Yes.” She tilted her head, tried to reclaim the tone of their earlier conversation. Instead, it came out small, if a little savage. Defensive. “Helion and I…hug.”  
  
Tarquin nodded. Tarquin abruptly say down, waiting for her sigh of acknowledgement before he gently tugged her down with her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” He breathed, “I should have asked.”  
  
“Asked _what_?”  
  
That absolutely did sound angry; but as he _impossibly_ seemed able to parse what she meant, as he had been for days, Tarquin didn’t take it personally. Instead, he reached for both of Nesta’s clenched hands, pulled them into his lap, not trying to unseat her white knuckled grip in the least.  
  
“How did you find out, about High Fae?”  
  
“Find out?” She wanted to sink into the sand and _die._ “Well, _after faeries burned down my house,_ I drowned. And then I read a lot of _books._ ”  
  
“Nesta, that’s not”-  
  
Nesta knew damned well that wasn’t what he meant, shame making it too easy to snap. “I know. I know, Tarquin.”  
  
He breathed out. “No one told you _anything_? Helped you adjust?”  
  
She wouldn’t let herself think it, not for a second, here under the warmth of the sun. Not of the House of Wind, whose very walls teemed with so much magic Nesta could hear it. Feel it, all the time, choking her. Not about every _too bright too loud_ second careening from overwhelmed to pain and back again.  
  
Not about being alone, helpless, as Elain sank too deep into Time itself.  
  
Alone. In Velaris, in Illyrian camps, in freezing mud, in the screaming wind of battle- alone in the moments after death had failed, but no new life came to sweep her up.  
  
Nesta wasn’t alone now, and she never would be again.  
  
“Being a faery suited me,” Nesta admitted, low, “There was no one.”  
  
Rage- _oh, she could smell it._ World-drowning, not a storm but the sea itself, water rising all the way to choke the sky- spasmed across Tarquin’s concerned face and was gone. Swallowed, just like that.  
_  
Nesta wanted to roll in it._  
  
But what she got was even more lovely.

A smile with no laughter, steady and fond. This man who could have shook the world, drowned eternity- who only wanted _and did_ use that power for something different. “You deserved _better._ ”  
  
A grasping, desperate part of her wanted to ask what that _meant._ Better care? Care at all? To be allowed the dignity of being told what she was rather than chase it down herself, every step a tiny agony.  
  
There was no agony here, just a fear unlike any kind that had populated her life.  
  
She wanted him to keep touching. Looking at her with that bare honestly, no matter how it could ache.  
  
Tarquin looked down at their hands, squeezed featherlight Nesta’s wrist. “I like you.”  
  
Raw, true. Nesta was going to fall apart, _so grateful he wasn’t looking at her._

“This is..” He twisted, the entire motion slowed down past even mortal speed, warning and care, until his cheek was level with hers. Nesta didn’t breathe as Tarquin, hardly a touch at all, brushed his cheek against her jaw. “What lovers do. That’s all. I want to smell like you. Other faeries do it too, but it’s not- the instinct isn’t the same. When High Fae love, we carry it on our skin.”  
  
She wondered if he could scent how much that _hurt_ , the loneliness that abruptly tore through Nesta.  
_  
He wanted to smell like her._  
  
Tarquin was still speaking, softer now, the words sheltered by Nesta’s neck. “I wasn’t even thinking, if that’s too much. I just _wanted-_ you with me, when you’re gone. But I can”-  
  
“ _Don’t stop_ ,” Nesta interrupted.  
  
It was too much, too fast, madness.  
  
And she wanted it.  
_  
“Nesta.”  
_  
It might as well have been a prayer, was absolutely a question. _Nesta,_ Tarquin whispered, like she was tearing him apart. Two syllables made to wound, held soft on his tongue.  
  
Slow, careful, Tarquin pressed his cheek to hers, and breathed.  
  
It took a long, embarrassing time, to realized she was shaking. Her whole entire body, rocking with the ghost of a sob, wrecked by the softness of his touch.  
  
And he didn’t say _anything.  
_  
Stayed still, leaning but barely holding on. His whole huge body was curved down to her’s but not, _and never_ , trapped. Still quiet breathing, a refuge, this whole moment a gift to her.  
  
He didn’t ask.  
  
Did absolutely nothing until Nesta’s eyes slid shut, until she curled all at once, into his lap.  
  
Tarquin’s breath caught.  
  
But still, he remained. Nesta’s choice to move- _Nesta’s choice to explain-_ and how could she? That Death lived in her bones, that she’d drowned in the darkest waters and was led back by sheer will and a golden soul, only to live again in a life where no love longed for her.  
  
Nesta had been prepared to die for this, or something like it.  
_  
And it hadn’t ever been this.  
_  
As a human, Nesta had been short. As a faery, High Fae at least in shape, she was rendered painfully delicate compared to the rest of her kind. It was easy, nothing at all except for the fact sheer intimacy _wanted to rattle apart her spine_ , to fit her entirety in the refuge of Tarquin’s arms.  
  
He let go of her wrists to catch her curled up legs, forearms crossed over Nesta’s shins in warm counterweight.  
  
Like this wasn’t the best thing she’d felt in _years-_ the sun beating down hot and steady, paled in comparison to the living heat of a body asking nothing of hers but to comfort _-_ Nesta hooked two fingers though the tangle of gold around Tarquin’s neck.  
  
Tugged, just once, the beautiful fretwork smooth beneath her fingertips. “So, what else…do High Fae do?”  
  
Half a laugh, swallowed just as thickly as the tears trying to make a home in the back of Nesta’s throat. “How do you feel about gifts?”  
  
There were about a hundred little divots and drops of gold splayed down his chest from the chain, and Nesta was going to find every single one. “Neutral.”  
  
At Tarquin’s little noise of acknowledgement, Nesta went on, breath gusting in a sigh across his open collar. “The Library has been absorbing things for longer probably, than Prythian has existed. When…when it was half awake, once, I asked for a hair pin? It filled a room by mistake.” Her hand slipped with his laugh, from gold straight to Tarquin’s sternum, shockingly alive.  
  
“Are there…” Nesta pressed her whole palm to his chest, utterly unprepared for the way he _sighed_ , slumped just a little closer. “Courting rules?”  
  
It took him a second to answer, leaning into Nesta’s touch like it was an anchor. “No. _No_ \- I just like giving gifts.” He craned to smile down on her, dimples on full display. “Cresseida’s inheritance alone is more than she knows what to do with, so I’ve been banned. Varian and I are in a death match to give each other better wine, but that’s stalled.”  
  
“And,” Nesta said without thinking at all, “I’m _clearly_ winning this if you count communing with holy sea monsters as a present.”  
  
“I _do_ ,” Tarquin said, absolutely serious, “Need to cover some ground.”  
  
He didn’t need to give her anything more than this- even if _this_ went nowhere. _She’d forgotten the ocean,_ just feet away. Had never actually known what it was like to be touched like this- with intention but not necessarily intent, just for the sake of being close.  
  
Nesta hadn’t imagined such a thing existed, for her.  
  
Her hand slipped lower, found more metal beneath that silky shirt. Gold pierced through- she wondered if it were matched set, _wondered_ \- something between a laugh and groan wrung itself from Tarquin’s throat as Nesta, experimentally, tugged.  
  
“ _No,_ ” She said, deciding.  
  
“No?”  
  
She could feel his smile, pressed to her brow. “No,” Nesta repeated, “You really don’t need to give me anything.”  
  
He nodded. “I won’t, if you really don’t want me to. But…small things? Sometimes?”  
  
Nesta’s smile- she’d thought it recovered, happy in her life in Day- tried very hard to split her face in two. “ _Sometimes.”  
_  
Tarquin leaned back the second Nesta pulled away, but she was only moving far enough to look him in the eye. Blue, blue, _blue_ \- a thousand dissonant shades between hers and his, she wanted to run from her grey straight into that deep, dreaming lagoon. “Is there anything else? High Fae do?”  
  
Not hesitation, sunlit water on her face like something physical. “Breakfast?”  
  
Her laugh, loud, rang through the air. _“Breakfast?_ ”  
  
Every time she thought she’d seen his widest smile Tarquin proved her wrong. “With me, tomorrow. Before you leave.”  
  
“I _was_ going to say goodbye.”  
  
“I know,” Easy, like he did know. Like Tarquin had expected nothing else. “But would you like to?”  
  
Nesta’s smile was an answer- _but she knew_ , knew and held with both grasping hands like her grip that did, in fact, eventually bend those necklaces, find that matching little gold bar piercing the other side of his chest- that Tarquin would always wait until she said it.  


***  
  


A sun soaked barefoot childhood ago, Tarquin’s mother had told him stories of the Library. A threat, really, a joke in her musical voice that echoed for years- to have more care, to try to enjoy his studies more than dreams, lest the Library come sweep him up.  
  
For the Ten Thousand was a sacred citadel of knowledge, but Librarians themselves something _more._  
_  
The dreamers_ , she had said, _like you.  
_  
True magic, longing souls who could be trusted with learning that predated their world. Millennia upon millennia never reduced to cold logic, for the Library itself lived and breathed, a creature that deserved love.  
  
It was hard to imagine it had ever been just a story, looking at Nesta Archeron after the sun went down.  
  
She chased the light. So subtle he didn’t notice for days, drifting with seeming purpose to catch every last ray of the sun setting on the ocean. Never _into_ the water, but a near thing, never standing in shadow when the option existed to let light paint over her pale skin.  
  
Gold, pink, red, an echo, _a promise_ \- her body that still shone, just a little, even in the dark.  
  
One, where there had stood five hundred.  
  
The Sword of Day, a woman whose dauntless life had left her longing for light.  
  
Sharp, ceaseless, so very easy to look at and see power, power, _power._ Tarquin couldn’t imagine even dozens more together could have distilled to the singular, vital force of Nesta as the Librarian. More than competence, ferociously wielded with terrifying ease- more than that red smile slicing into the world- life a book, every page for her to turn.  
_  
Women who look to the horizon_ , the stories said.  
  
It wasn’t just the horizon that got her attention- a strange angled look more to sky than sea, Nesta who never looked into the water unless she _had_ to- but hungry blue grey eyes never stopped searching.  
  
Hunger _itself_ , for every bit of Summer Nesta encountered.  
  
It made Tarquin want to do insane things. Stop the tide and see if stillness would tempt her elegant steps out into sunlit water. Introduce her to every single human who made a home in Adriata, so that she’d know real and incontrovertible, that her people really were safe here. Tear apart with his bare hands whoever had touched her before in years of faery life that left her so surprised to be treated with care.

She smelt like the fire of stars themselves.

Tarquin wasn’t foolish enough to try to say so soon that all he wanted- all, utterly- was to watch her burn and keep burning forever.  
  
And watch her burn he did, on that last, magic night.  
  
Awaited full moon high over head, the Librarian of the Ten Thousand set to curse-breaking.  
  
She’d taken over a terrace- had apparently, without garnering the notice of any palace staff, or the small army of Cressieda’s spies trailing her, managed to pull the entire rest of the wreckage from the sea, cursed treasure filling the space.  
  
Had pulled some free recently; algae muddling her skirt, torn hem dragged wetly as Nesta kicked aside gold so full of death Tarquin was sickened at the just the smell, stomach lurching from ten feet away.  
  
It pre-dated Summer, might have been older even that Prythian itself, ancient, cloying draw to doom.  
  
And Nesta was _swearing_ at it- cooing, like Tarquin might at a dolphin troubling nets- in the same slightly sing-song tone she didn’t seem to realize he could hear in his quarters, when she told stories to infant Gods in the middle of the night.  
  
Tarquin stopped.  
  
Glad for once this entire wing was empty- provided nowhere for Cressieda’s many spies, for his happily nosey people to catch sight of the grin he couldn’t hold in. Folklore sprung up overnight- Nesta, not just Tarquin’s beloved, but _Summer’s._  
  
Nesta, the Librarian. Nesta, Death torn free of the Cauldron, a true immortal. The woman who’d returned their God- Nesta, whose ceaseless work had not gone unnoticed.  
  
She didn’t like the attention.  
  
And Tarquin didn’t mind in the slightest being a buffer for now- shielding to her comfort that full, terrifying glory that he so adored.  
  
All of Summer would know someday, if Tarquin was lucky.  
  
But for now he watched, stifling a laugh as Nesta, glowing pale beneath the full moon, breathed in poison like another might the scent of flowers. Hissed, _mad,_ beautiful, at the gathering power that could have dropped a High Lord stone dead.  
  
“I know you’re there,” Nesta said, sharpness singing through his blood. She looked up, mouth twisting into a tiny, perfect smile. “Stay where you are.”  
  
Tarquin crossed his arms, leant in the open arch, and fought the urge to winnow across the whole cursed mess to kiss that vicious mouth. “Hello, Nesta.”  
_  
“Tarquin.”_  
  
A caress, dark as the night and twice as heated- but she broke, laughed full out as Tarquin waved.  
  
“Stay,” Nesta repeated, a bright peal.  
  
Tarquin had no problem listening- he’d stay. Wherever she put him, do whatever she asked, that beautiful laugh still hanging in the air.  
  
With one final jab of her finger in his direction, Nesta seized her skirt in both hands and strode away. Leap, a single, easy motion, to stand on the terrace wall. Direct in the light of moon, bathed in brightness like the sea itself, reflected back- looming over guaranteed death like something worse.  
  
Something stronger.  
  
He’d asked her what it would be like- how exactly Nesta broke a curse, but she’d shrugged. _They are the curse_ , she’d said, face tilted into the sun, _not cursed. It will be easier with the moon, they were forged of the blackest night._ A blink, amused blue eyes on his, _and blood, of course.  
_  
Blood, of course- like it was easy, nothing, that Nesta might unmake a forging that might as well be a life itself, born of alchemy.  
  
Her power in fear was a thrashing thing, an animal trapped, clawing its way out bloody.  
  
But when Nesta raised her hands, shining like she belonged in the sky herself, it was a _dance.  
_  
Music made shape, fire that did not burn but _consumed,_ reduced with a roar something old as time to bare pieces into shining ash.  
  
A symphony she conducted, fearless with her back to the Summer Sea, reeling in power, swallowing it whole.  


Nesta, burning through the night. Nesta, celestial all herself, a light Tarquin wanted to call him home.  
  
An entire month of waiting, gone, just like that.  
  
Tarquin didn’t run- but it was a near thing, silver barely faded, skidding through ash to slide to her feet.  
  
Another laugh as good as an embrace, Nesta had already settled to a seat on the high wall. She didn’t seem to care that her dress was smoldering- that she was brighter than the moon, a holy thing- she was looking at him, and no where else.  
  
Tarquin sank to his knees.  
  
Traced his hands up her calves, last smoldering embers killed by his touch, heat rattling him apart.

“Never,” He managed, staring up at her, “If I live a million years, will I see something like that again.”  
  
Nesta tilted her head, the late hour so much as triumph failing both to soften even a bit her relentless beautiful face. “Not true.”  
  
“No?”  
  
His breath was coming too fast, ragged.  
  
A small, vicious thing, her smile that cut through it all. “Courting,” She said, “If you stay around, you’ll see more. I might make it a rule- _very boring_ doing magic alone, you know.”  
_  
“Not an if,_ ” Tarquin breathed, heart in his throat. “Make as many rules as you want.”  
  
Her hair slipped over her shoulder, liquid silk. His hands were full of fabric, a false echo, not nearly so soft- but all the more satisfying, the delicate curve of Nesta’s knees cupped by his grip.  
  
Leaning, into his touch.  
  
“Don’t you want any rules?” Nesta asked, in the slip of a voice, curving down toward him.  
  
“ _No,_ ” Tarquin gasped, honest.  
  
A grin, electric. “ _No?_ What if I destroy another room? Kidnap a kraken to take home with me?”  
  
Tarquin swallowed, feeling _wild_ \- right, supplicant before her. “I want you to be happy.”  
  
Nesta nodded, slipped low enough she reach out for his shoulder to steady. “Rule one, we make each other happy. We tell each other, when we are.”  
  
“We tell each other when we’re unhappy too. Even if it can’t be fixed.”  
  
“It can be shared,” Nesta breathed, across his upturned face.  
  
“Three,” Tarquin managed around the feeling fighting up in his chest, hope and something better, “We take care of each other. No matter how far apart.”  
  
Nesta’s touch, so soft to be torture, benediction crept up his neck, curved soft, soft, around Tarquin’s jaw. Her thumb, pressed to his bottom lip. “I like the sound of that.”  
  
He couldn’t help it- Tarquin laughed, heart overflowing. “I like _you_.”  
  
And like it was the easiest thing in the world- _as it was meant to be, it was_ \- Nesta kissed his open mouth. Swallowed down Tarquins happy breath, took what he’d been offering all along.  
  
She tasted _sweet._  
  
Sugar bloom on Nesta’s tongue, overwhelming as much as the catch of teeth on his lip, ocean mist stinging blood.  
  
Iron, salt, sunny sweetness- life itself tumbling warm in Tarquin’s arms as she gave up leaning down entirely and let herself fall, landing without a hint of hesitation on top of him.  
  
Tarquin pulled her close, tumbling against the stone wall.  
  
Wrapped both arms around those slender, impossibly strong shoulders. Surrendered entirely to this- half a laugh, bubbling up from Nesta’s throat. That he really was bleeding in earnest now and wanted _to give it her_.  
  
Vital screaming color smearing over her mouth, pupils blown dark but eyes still blue, blue, _blue_ , sunrise on the ocean when all was well and calm.  
  
He could live in that hour forever.  
  
“ _You_ ,” Nesta gasped.  
  
“Me?”  
  
He wanted to lick the blood from her face- he did, gentle, trailing lips down her chin, ears full of the shaking exhale of her lungs, the glorious sound of Nesta’s laugh, rendered unsteady by him. It felt like victory. Like _magic-_ like seeing safe harbor after a storm that should have killed even him.  
  
“I’m going to miss you,” Nesta murmured, head thrown back as Tarquin continued his descent, breathing in the scent of her neck.  
  
“You don’t have to.”  
  
“No?”  
  
Tangling together their fingers, Tarquin pulled the hand curved around his jaw away to kiss her palm. Her pulse, that heart of her’s that sounded like no one else in the world, not quite fae, not quite human, nor even the absence of sound from a God- Nesta, a rhythm all her own, a ceaseless tide.  
  
Nesta, whose blue eyes were burning silver in the dark.  
  
“You can always return.” Despite his position, supine on the ground, Tarquin shrugged. “I’m here.” _I’m here for you._ He hoped she believed it, that the promise was heard. “Not going anywhere.”  
  
She breathed a laugh, “How else would we have breakfast together?”  
  
Not a rejection. Not even a true brush off, the look on her face so tender it hurt. Ached all the more that she had to say it, to retreat- some day, Tarquin hoped, she’d stop being surprised.  
  
Not just believe him but _expect,_ as Tarquin could no longer imagine ceasing to feel, how much he wanted her.  
  
Under the sun, happy. Her ideas that painted the future clearer, her scathing laugh and eager heart that made Tarquin feel like he’d been given a _gift_ \- a chance, a dream, what he’d choose and keep choosing, forever.  
  
Nesta, beside him.  
  
On top of him, as she was now, Tarquin’s whole body hers for the taking should Nesta wish.  
  
A woman so worthy of love it broke his heart.  
  
A month, seven hundred years, a thousand sunrises, a million nights apart- Tarquin’s heart was the ocean, Nesta Archeron a sea all to herself.  
  
No burden, not waiting- but time.  
  
Immortal time, to love her well.  
  


***

He’d kissed her until the moon faded.  
  
Until Nesta’s whole body was molten, gold melted slow with every kiss dragged over skin, every hour of Tarquin’s reverent, deliberate touch pinned between Nesta and stone, so happy to be there the sea roared, just out of view.  
  
Just safe enough away, Nesta’s teeth set to Tarquin’s pulse.  
  
“What now?” Tarquin had whispered, busy nuzzling her neck, both arms wrapped warm around Nesta where they’d eventually careened, curled together sidelong on the cold tile.  
  
She didn’t want to _move.  
_  
“I put on something that isn’t singed or covered in algae,” Nesta suggested, to a low hum of agreement from Tarquin’s chest. “And I’ll let you buy me…eight, too many? Of those cinnamon things to bring back to Day.”  
  
A laugh rumbled against her spine. “No such thing as too many, you love them.”  
  
Nesta wasn’t proud of the noise she made in response, but Tarquin seemed to enjoy it, arm wrapped around her ribs pulling taut.  
  
“And,” He continued, voice gone depthless deep, “I like the ash.”  
  
“Because you’re covered in it too?”  
  
“Because,” Tarquin kissed the back of her neck, the sting of teeth like the brush of a butterfly, “I got to see you on _fire._ Alight. _Absolutely fucking impossible_ \- you’re magic, Nesta.”  
  
It was hard to argue with that- harder, after Nesta rolled over and Tarquin absolutely crushed her in a hug that felt more like magic than anything her hands had ever wrought- but as he was not actually disagreeing in any way, Nesta won.  
  
Only half a victory, to watch in dim light the happy slant of his bitten mouth as he walked away from depositing Nesta at her door, to see him look back again and again at her own flushed face.  
  
Alone, for all of a second, until Nesta stepped through the doorway.  
  
Despite the hour, an ice bucket filled with far finer things than Nesta had seen Tarquin touch was propped on the stairs in her quarters. Two steps lower, face to face with the thrown back curtains, sat the Princess of Adriata, limned in dawn.  
  
“He doesn’t know,” Cresseida said, without moving, or so much as glancing at Nesta above her, “That you violated our border two years ago.”  
  
Nesta counted to ten. Didn’t as she might have similarly far back in her short history, dent the banister beneath her hand, turn stone to dust.  
  
“Doesn’t he?”  
  
Cresseida hummed. “It was _my_ purview. He was on the outer islands, bringing food aid. I mustered all of our…less than traditional forces.” She turned, gold bound coiled hair sliding serpentine beautiful over her bared shoulders. “A High Lord couldn’t take a territory by himself, but _you_ could. If you wanted.”  
  
An assassination planned.  
  
The honesty was at least, refreshing. Nesta remembered almost nothing of the hours she’d spent, time slipping away, watching the sea. Feeling with senses she only half understood the slow sink and mounting pressure that would shatter even siphons forged in blood.  
  
She hoped they were sand now.  
_  
Food.  
_  
Shining little specs of _nothing_ , lost forever to the water.  
  
Three steps down, an empty glass waited. Nesta scooped it up, trailing torn skirt caught up over top of her arm.  
  
Cresseida had been waiting for her, but not long- condensation a mere foggy beginning on the outside of the silver bucket, wine bubbling to merry seethe as Nesta poured.  
  
“I don’t _want_ ,” She said, eventually.  
  
“I know,” Cresseida hissed, lofty. “And if you’d told anyone you were coming, _we would have let you in._ The Librarian is sacrosanct, passes in peace.”  
  
“And you don’t like that?”  
  
Clarion against the stone, Cresseida set down her glass in a vicious little snap. “I don’t like who you are.” Her gaze, narrow and canny, found Nesta’s. Not quite Tarquins warm lagoon water- deeper, a reef unseen until too late.  
  
“If you go back to the North and speak of what a fool he’s made of himself, _I don’t care,_ Librarian or goddess or _Archeron_ , I will find a way to make your life a misery. For however long you live.”  
  
Furious, the breath of anger caught in Nesta’s lungs dissipated.  
  
She released her skirts, gauzy expanse dragging, and stomped down the stairs to drop; sit and face the dawn rising pink and red with Cresseida. “I don’t think he’s a fool at all.”  
  
The Princess sighed.  
  
“ _And,_ ” Nesta said, word like a blade, “You don’t either, or you wouldn’t follow him. You wouldn’t be here.”  
  
The heat of the glare directed at the side of her head might have been daunting, had Nesta not appreciated it so much.  
  
Cresseida, after a moment, sighed. Ground out, flinty, “Not a fool, no. But I give far less of a damn about human integration than I do my cousin’s survival.”  
  
“Not low fae?”  
  
The eye roll that followed might as well have been audible. “There are no _low fae._ High fae is a human term, before we had language in common. A hundred thousand years ago we were simply Tuath Dé, another kind among many. Summer, the children of the sea.”  
  
Light was bleeding into the open windows, unreal upon the ocean, bloody and promising.  
  
Nesta let every bit of what she thought carry over into tone. “High Lords do like to pretend they’ve ruled the world forever, don’t they?”  
  
“You learn that in the tyrannical North, Librarian?”  
  
“Among other things.” She leant her shoulder on the banister, turnt to look back at Cresseida. “I haven’t gone back. I never will.” Nesta swallowed, truth spilling free like so much savage light around them. “I’ll slit Rhysand’s god damned throat, if I do.”  
  
Cresseida raised her drink in a toast, and Nesta met it.  
  
“Tell me if you ever do,” She said, simply, “He took something from me. A pound of flesh _would_ do in exchange.”  
  
Nesta laughed.  
  
And for a split, hopeful second, Cresseida smiled back. Until she began to speak again, head tilted, utterly wry. “You don’t sleep, do you? Or can’t, here.”  
  
She hadn’t been trying to hide it- surely someone was going to talk eventually. Fisherman, out before dawn nonetheless seeing the Librarian in yesterdays clothes, feeding baby sea monsters stories. Youth’s working behind counters of the bakeries she frequented at all hours. The people she sought out for the Library themselves, across the whole territory, who might wonder why she never seemed to stay _still._  
  
Tarquin, who watched Nesta chase the sinking sun like a human seeing magic for the first time.  
  
Not a secret, but not something she wished to speak of.  
  
Not something Nesta was sure she wanted Tarquin to know at all, at least yet.  
  
“Did you sleep well,” Nesta said, on the edge of true offense, “After _Amarantha?”  
_  
Cresseida didn’t even flinch. So _soft,_ faery lords that wouldn’t even say the name- this woman had lost her entire family but for two, an entire bloodline nearly eradicated- and here she was, strong.  
  
Admirably relentless, when it wasn’t directed at Nesta herself.  
  
“The sea,” Cresseida said, with a strange smile, “The waves. They know your name, Nesta Archeron.”  
  
Drowned, became, eternity drunk down. Not just the Summer Sea that knew Nesta, but the waters of the whole world. The light, the dark, the fathomless in-between. Mad with residual magic and pale in comparison, the High Lords might have thought the Cauldron they mended was true, but the sea could not be fooled.  
  
“I think the real question,” Cresseida said, sipping her drink, “Is whether you’ll come back.”  
_  
If you can,_ was the challenge, and Nesta heard it clear.  
  
In earnest now, the sun climbed. Red burnt away to leave behind dazzling gold, somehow both brighter and softer, giving way to embrace that undeniable blue. Threefold, and not unlike where Nesta’s heart lay. She _wanted_ to return. She wanted the sleep for three days and see Tarquin through eyes that weren’t halfway to dreams.  
  
She wanted to run like hell to the Library and bury her racing pulse in Helion’s hugs, in Elain’s laugh, in pomegranate seeds and the world she’d built for herself, where it was safe.  
  
Every high wall and tower and ward.  
  
Every burning, impossible moment in the sunlight, Tarquin’s kind eyes and enormous, clever laugh. The way he’d knelt on the ground while she panicked, never brought it up again. Pearls and promises, an embrace that asked nothing but succor.  
  
He’d write to her.  
  
He wanted- what lovers do. High fae. To carry Nesta on his skin, proud and longed for, even when she left.  
  
Nesta tossed back the rest of her drink. Stood, to walk forward into yet another blinding, beautiful, Summer day.  
  
“I’m coming back.”  
  
For him- for dreams spoken to waves and chances taken with the tide, a future built from wreckage stronger.  
  
But mostly, for herself.  
  
For the possibility of who Nesta might be, on the Summer sea.  



End file.
